Sometimes you need to pretend to be someone else to do things you're afraid of. This week I stepped into the (sexy, high-heeled) shoes of a blogger I've mentioned here a few times before: M. Elizabeth Evans of Surviving in Italy fame. I admire her so much for how fearless she is with her writing. I want to be like that too, and she gave me permission by asking me to write a guest post for her.

On the one hand, seeing all these strong, progressive Italian women fighting for equality and uniformly avoiding the word feminism makes me wonder whether I should reconsider using it myself; that if I want my ideas to have an impact, I should consider where I am, adopt the popular language in use and not presume to impose my beliefs in the name of social justice.
On the other hand, what the hell else do you use if you’re talking about feminism in Italian?!
Like, if you’re going to tell me that to gain credibility and access to power I need to leave it out of my vocabulary, you have to at least come up with a decent equivalent. And not ‘women’s issues’ or ‘women’s rights’. Don’t pinkify my cause to make it more palatable.

Read the full post here.